Chester Mystery Play aimed at sceptics and gawpers

Jun 14 2008 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

Director Robin Goddard isn’t afraid of controversy, as he creates a more accessible take on the traditional Chester Mystery Plays. Emma Pinch reports

JUDAS as Jesus’s dupe, a tetchy, blundering God, spinning crosses and exploding body parts. Whatever else audiences make of this year’s Chester Mystery Plays, people will certainly be left with plenty to talk about.

Director Robin Goddard’s take on the ancient texts has already caused a stir with cast members.

“The original text is Biblical, and I’m not religious,” he states. “I respect anyone who is, but I can’t write and direct it just aimed at a religious audience. Nowadays, people want drama and emotional characters, and in certain areas it will be controversial. Some people have taken it personally. But my priority is to entertain.”

There’s a good reason the Mystery Plays are performed only every five years – the scale of the half-million pound production is phenomenal.

Goddard is directing more than 560 drama enthusiasts, including 300 children and a donkey, in five hours of live performance. A week ago, work started from scratch on St Werburgh’s Cathedral Green on a lavish theatre, equipped with all the attendant health and safety conundrums and conveniences that modern audiences demand.

The open-air element provides its own challenges. In 2003, the set was struck by lightning and the cast and audience were deluged by heavy, continuous rain. Donkey braying and the wailing of an ambulance competed with Jesus’s cries as He died on the cross.

When he directed in 2003, he admits he was aiming for competency and played it safe.

His new viewpoint is that of the sceptical “gawpers” of the time with mercurial allegiances, rather than the dyed-in-the-wool Christian.

“People will like Lucifer,” he explains. “We have a guy who is a professional magician. He’s a very likeable character who rebels against the system and wants to change things.

“God is not what you would expect. He’s God with faults. I’m not making out it is the first creation, rather it’s just one He had a go at. He got excited, over-reached himself and wants to destroy everyone because He got it wrong.”

He deliberately didn’t watch Liverpool’s Nativity, as he also aims for a realistic approach, although his production won’t be “Mary and Joseph booking into a B&B”.

“You can’t really do much about the Crucifixion,” he points out, “it has to be as it was. But I don’t go for this image of a very clean Jesus hanging from the cross and smiling down at everyone. He is going to be brutalised and he isn’t going to go quietly.”

He scoured modern history for ideas.

“I’ve found Idi Amin’s regime lends itself well to that of Herod. The boy soldiers brought up by urban guerrillas, older people who do what they are paid to do and it doesn’t matter how they do it. Children are just casualties and the Slaughter of the Innocents is quite bloody. Stories written all those years ago do have modern comparatives.”

There’s a similarly modern take on the relationship between Jesus and his disciples. One is a woman, the feisty Mary Magdalen, not the prostitute he states the Church made her because of her sex.

“Even before the Da Vinci Code came out, with the idea of a woman disciple, I didn’t believe these guys walked through the desert and had nothing to do with women and never went home. And some disciples were closer to Him than others. Judas, for example. It was very easy to make him into a villain. He was the closest to Jesus, and Jesus was quite cruel to him. He was a victim.”

This year marks the first time since the revival of the Chester Mystery plays in 1951 that the coming of an anti-Christ has been included. He – though it is a she in Goddard’s version – replicates the miracles of Christ, accusing Jesus of being an impostor and claiming the title of Messiah for herself.

“I saw parallels with the modern cult of celebrity,” he says. “People believe what they see on TV or read in the press.

“It’s done as a sort of a burlesque cabaret, with Lucifer as MC. It’s not like the rest of the plays but addresses the gap between the Ascension and the Last Judgment. The anti-Christ appears on a cross which magically turns round so it is inverted when she’s found to be a fraud. Then there’s an explosion of body parts.”

Goddard admits his interpretation has touched sensitive nerves among some of his cast.

“The Guilds took the Mystery Plays from the Church and the amount of swearing in them were phenomenal,” he says. “If I put it in, people would be horrified. They also poked fun at local hate figures. People seem more worried by the bawdy element than the slaughter of the innocents.”

He hopes the audience will be as totally immersed as some of the actors have been. “We have Simeon, who was not allowed to die until he had seen Jesus. He takes his last look and is taken by the Angel Gabriel. We’ve had to have people taken off because they’ve got too involved.”

Sid Mofya, from Upton, a 31-year-old engineer and business analyst for Shell, is playing the part of Jesus. His last acting experience was at school, aged 12.

“I am religious, in that I go to church, and trying to get into character has been interesting,” says the father-of-one who is originally from Zambia. “I mean, He knew He was going to die, and that it would be painful, but was He prepared for how painful?”

He says his wife has been “gracious” about the time commitments, and his company has been supportive, too. “They wanted to sponsor a scene and chose the Resurrection. I suppose they thought it had a nice ring to it.”

Richard Spilman, 51, from Frodsham, had been juggling shifts at his day job as a sergeant in Cheshire Police until he retired last week, and is playing Herod. “I play him as someone who is inherently unstable and shouts a lot to protect his position.

“The current church teaching tends not to address evil because there isn’t an easy answer, so going back to the 13th century has been interesting.”

But, as much as anything, the production is a social exercise – the disciples have a regular drinking night and the Roman soldiers go out together, too.

“What I ask of everybody is to take a step back and not assume that this guy called Christ is a Messiah or you know how it ends, and not treat it as a religious missive,” says Goddard.

“As long as audiences go away talking about it, I’ll be happy.”

emma.pinch@dailypost.co.uk

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